Privatize

No one loves the Edsa Carousel bus system. It is a clumsy improvisation pasted together while the population of the metropolis was kept off the streets during the depths of the pandemic.

Now that traffic volumes have returned to normal, we hate the system even more. It transformed the overpasses and underpasses, especially in the Cubao area, into exasperating bottlenecks. It forced the closure of U-turn slots along Edsa. It forces passengers to walk intolerably long distances, up and down stairs and board their buses in the most perilous locations.

The Edsa Carousel adds to the traumatic transport woes the city’s harried citizens endure day in and day out. It is the mass transport equivalent of the shanties that fill our slums, with unsightly and dangerous concrete blocks to demarcate the bus lanes.

The Carousel is an impostor. It is not a rapid bus system. It only resembles one, forcing the once wild buses to run in sequence. But it is entirely at grade, stealing valuable road space from an already congested avenue.

It is certainly not a revolutionary rethinking of urban transport. It runs alongside a commuter rail that was supposed to have made the buses redundant. It is a Band Aid solution to the failed metropolitan mass transport system.

So unloved is the Carousel that nearly every business group of consequence, every think tank of note, signed on to a petition asking government to privatize this unremarkable system.

There is merit in this petition. The Carousel, to work, requires a huge amount of investment – not the least in buses actually configured to load passengers from the middle of the road. Parts of the line (if not all of it) will need to be elevated to create new road space and allow U-turn slots.

Privatization will open this system to investments. That will help our economy and possibly open a better option for the harried commuters. We must look at this proposal closely and check if anyone might be willing to invest in this sloppy system.

There is, to be sure, a constituency for keeping this system in public hands. In the main, this constituency is composed of people who enjoy the free transport made possible by government subsidy (at least until the end of this year).

This business of subsidizing the Carousel is unwise. It takes away the market for the MRT-3 that follows the same route. The better option is to expand services at the MRT-3 by making more intermittent trips. The buses should be the commuters’ last option.

Or else, we might consider building a second level for Edsa. I have seen the scale model for this at Ramon Ang’s office. It is an all-steel system that could be quickly snapped together to minimize disruption of traffic flow. It is expensive but is likely the only solution to a constantly gridlocked road.

Let them bloom

Paraphrasing Mao: Let a hundred mobility solutions bloom in a metropolis where transport capacity has fallen way below commuter demand.

We have a transport crisis. People queue for hours to get a ride. Relying on mass transport is a risky adventure. It is cruel to quash all novel mobility solutions anyone may offer.

When Grab Philippines acquired Move It for about a billion pesos, we heard voices of protest. Some “technical working group” (TWG) thought it violated its effort to limit motorcycle taxi services to only three players – even if in the end there will still be only three players in this business bureaucrats want to regulate.

The other voices are predictable. They were voices of rivals that want to protect their market share won under oligopolistic conditions.

The fact is, there is enough of a market for motorcycle taxis. Despite the TWG cap of 15,000 partner-riders for each of the three players, Angkas has between 20,000 to 27,000 riders each day, ferrying commuters to where they need to go.

Only bureaucratic whim shaped that cap on the number of riders to be deployed (45,000 for Metro Manila). The market is far larger than that.

Ample market demand is precisely why Grab entered the business, committing to activate 2,000 more riders to service demand. Give our commuters the rides they need.

Transport Secretary Jimmy Bautista is correct in staying out of the matter of Grab acquiring Move It. In his mind, this is a simple merger and acquisition deal better left to the private sector. There is no need for government to intervene in this one.

Sure, there is need for government to regulate the motorcycle taxi business. But that regulation should not be about setting caps on the number of service-providers. It should be almost entirely about ensuring standards of commuter and road safety.

The reason the TWG has been so slow in its work is because bureaucrats want to intervene in every aspect of the business. They began imposing caps and preventing new players from entering what appears to be a lucrative market.

There is a lucrative market out there because our consumers are starved for options. When they could get no rides, they are forced to walk. In the midst of this urban transport crisis we are experiencing, the attitude of government ought to be to let anyone selling a ride to do business and offer a better solution.

So far, government agencies have responded to the crisis by deploying trucks to rescue stranded commuters. That is unsustainable. Let the free market work and allow a thousand solutions to proliferate.